Her feet are bare and high on the dashboard.

Her hair tucked into that baseball cap while blonde strands, the ones she lets fall out, blow Across her smile.
There’s no Spotify, no iPod, no CDs. She found a country radio station.

He drives fast, she thinks.
He drives fast for this old truck, but she feels safe.
His elbow hangs out the window while he gently holds the wheel,
and his other hand holds her hand, gently.

They haven’t said a word to each other in an hour.
Not a word, and yet, mile after mile, their intimate discussion continues.
They talk, not through voices or glances,
only through skin.

He kneads her palm.
He kneads and works his way slowly, from her wrist to her fingertips then back again.
His nails slide up her arm to the soft inside of her elbow,
then, as slow as the moon sweeps the sky, return to her wrist and hand.

He cannot hear her soft moan when he pushes into that spot.
He cannot hear her over Willie turned up loud and over the rushing air, but he knows.
He knows from her slightest word, whispered through her palm, so he stays.
He presses deeper and slower and finds in her hand that release,
and he says to her, through his fingers, “I know you.”

Everything else—the blur of the river valley flying past, warm fragrant air rich with the summer grass, country music through the old AM radio…
Everything else is a party in another room as they kiss and touch in a quiet dark corner of the house, his hands up her shirt, under her bra, no sense of time.

He brings her hand to his mouth,
Brushes his lips across her palm,
and softly kisses every finger as if each one were her lips kissed for the first time,
and he says to her, through his kisses, “I adore you.”

The radio plays.
The wind swirls around the cab and around her bare legs.
With a glance to the mirror he changes lanes, two fingers on the wheel.
And she smiles.

This isn’t our exit, she thinks, as the truck veers to the right,
But with a gentle squeeze, she knows.
She knows and she feels that rush.
That rush that spills from her throat through her heart and floods the temple from the inside.
And her hips move, slightly, and her toes spread, slightly, and her lips part, slightly, and he knows.
He knows it surely and completely through the palm of her hand.
And he says to her, through his fingers, “I want you too Baby.”

~

Author: Derek Robert Delahunt

Image: Amanda Parsons/Flickr

Editor: Jean Weiss